80 Raja-vidya: The King of Knowledge

our minds, we accept material existence as happiness.
A dog or hog cannot understand what kind of misera-
ble life he is passing. He actually thinks that he is
enjoying life, and this is called the covering or illusive
influence of material energy. On the Bowery, there
are so many drunkards lying in the street, and theyre
all thinking, ‘We are enjoying life.”” But those who
are passing them by are thinking, ““Oh how miserable
they are.” That is the way of the illusory energy. We
may be in a miserable condition, but we accept it
thinking that we are very happy. This is called igno-
rance. But when one is awakened to knowledge, he
thinks, ““Oh, I am not happy. I want freedom, but
there is no freedom. I don’t want to die, but there is
death. I don’t want to grow old, but there is old age.
I don’t want diseases, but there are diseases.”’ These
are the major problems of human existence, but we
ignore them and concentrate on solving very minor
problems. We consider economic development to be
the most important thing, forgetting how long we
shall live here in this material world. Economic
development or no economic development, at the
end of sixty or a hundred years our life will be
finished. Even if we accumulate a million dollars, we
must leave it all behind when we leave this body. We
need to come to understand that in the material
world whatever we are doing is being defeated by the
influence of material nature.

We want freedom, and we want to travel all over
the world and all over the universe. Indeed, that is
our right as spirit soul. The spirit soul in Bhagavad-
gita is called sarva-gatah, which means that he has the
